How a typhoon event transforms public risk perception of climate change: A study in China

Risk perception understanding is fundamental for risk management. The effects of catastrophic events on public risk perception of projects such as nuclear plants have become a critical concern, however, there is still few studies concentrate on public risk perception of extreme weather brought by climate change. In this study, the proposed statistical methods were applied to evaluate the impacts of Typhoon Meranti on climate change risk perception of undergraduates from Xiamen University, China. It is found that both the evaluation on personal efforts and domestic community efforts on climate change mitigation were significantly affected by the Typhoon Meranti, while the public risk perception structure of climate change did not change significantly after the typhoon. Meanwhile, disciplinary background, teaching contents and the location of hometown are main influential factors on interviewees' risk perception of climate change. The results indicated that the transformation of public risk perception is a long-term process, education can be an effective approach to promote public's concern and comprehension on climate change. The proposed framework explores a quantitative method to measure the impacts of an extreme weather event on public risk perception and its policy implications on public risk. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.